First-Ever Award Show for GIFs Launches Today

The .GIFYs launch today, the first-ever award show dedicated to the animated .GIF format.

Created by a team at CP+B LA “in order to honor GIFs as a medium, social commentary and art form,” the .GIFYs nominees were selected by “a panel of internet experts from Buzzfeed, Gawker, Tumblr, Mashable, Joystiq, The Daily Dot, Engadget and more, who have pulled from their own archives, reached out to their hundreds of thousands of twitter followers and endlessly scoured the Internet to curate the best of the best animated GIFs.”

Starting today, the .GIFYs crew has opened up voting to the public to select winners across 12 categories: Animals, Art+Design, Can’t Look Away, Cats, Film+TV, Mashup, Nature+Science, News+Politics, Reaction, Sports, WTF, and GIF of the Year. “The GIF is now 26 years old, and there are millions of them online. It’s time they received their due respect with a proper awards show,” explained .GIFYS co-founder William Sawyer at CP+B Los Angeles. “We recruited some of the top names in internet culture to curate the best, and we’re looking to the whole internet to decide the winners.”

Needless to say, many of the nominees are hilarious, and most of these categories should be hotly contested. Head on over to the .GIFYs site to make your voice heard, and don’t forget to vote for the GIF of the dude pouring Dr. Pepper all over himself behind John Kruk in the News+Politics section. Voting for the .GIFYs lasts a week, and the winners will be announced on the site later in the month. Stay tuned for credits after the jump.